I will never forget seeing a very short but very powerful film featuring a young girl being assailed with hundreds of images of physical perfection. As she stands, overwhelmed by idealised bodies and perfectly constructed faces, the tag line appears on the screen: talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does.

It was difficult to be a Scot in London yesterday, because for once it felt like the real action was elsewhere. Alex Salmond's speech to the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, in which he laid out the details of the SNP's constitutional position and plans felt like some kind of historic moment.

This year the government is making available an extra £650 million to help principal local authorities to freeze council tax. In the last 10 years council tax has almost doubled across the UK, yet many residents have not seen a corresponding increase in the services they receive.

Last July Rebekah Brooks told her assembled staff that "worse revelations are yet to come and you will understand in a year why we closed News Of The World". We haven't had to wait a year and the evidence from the Surrey Police published today by our House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee lays bare the scandal of phone hacking at the paper during the Milly Dowler case.

The long awaited consultation document on the promised statutory register of lobbyists has been published. This week, the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) is contacting individual members of our Public Affairs Group to seek their views on the questions it raises.

Last week, we learned that not only are vast swathes of the general public feeling nervous about the Conservative's Healthcare Reform Bill, but so are healthcare professionals. Several healthcare unions have started to sharpen their scalpels.

In October 2011, I closed down my world in a leafy provincial English town in and headed to Kabul, with the avowed intent to establish myself as an internationally recognised photojournalist. I decided to chronicle the experience of my day-to-day life in my online Kabul Diaries.

On Saturday, the Shadow Chancellor admitted that if the Labour Party were in government, they would not deviate from the tough decisions that George Osborne and David Cameron are making in an effort to cut the deficit.

Those who have known somebody with a terminal illness will know the distress and concern that can be present towards the end of life, and the real vulnerability that exists amongst families in these circumstances.

If Twitter is to be believed (yes I know, I know) then there was a bit of a kerfuffle at the Fabians New Year Conference on the weekend when - it is claimed - accountancy giant KPMG was spontaneously booed by the crowd.

Nadine Dorries' proposals have been lambasted as being out of touch, based on religiosity and an attempt to impose Christian moral values on others as well as being sexist by targeting girls exclusively. Perhaps some of this is true and certainly some of her reasoning behind the bill is questionable if we are being polite, ludicrous if we are being blunt. But I can't help but think that whilst not hitting the nail on the head, she has touched a nerve that we as a society need to acknowledge and the government and educational authorities need to address.